


deck the halls with mistletoe (let all your heavy burdens go)

by joshllyman



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:28:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21842197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joshllyman/pseuds/joshllyman
Summary: “My boy,” she says, cupping her hand to his cheek, pride in her voice. “I’m so glad you’re home, Tooru.”“Me, too,” he lies easily, summoning a smile that she doesn’t care to look beyond, and lets her pull him into another hug.Pleasantries are exchanged and she tries to get him to stay downstairs for dinner, but he waves her off easily enough with the excuse of jet lag. With promises of getting some sleep he lugs his bag up the stairs and lets himself into the bedroom.Iwaizumi Hajime is sitting on his bed.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 8
Kudos: 201





	deck the halls with mistletoe (let all your heavy burdens go)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sourlemonblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sourlemonblue/gifts).



> merry christmas lu <3

There are a lot of things that haven’t happened in the three years since Oikawa joined the Japanese National Volleyball Team. It’s been three years, at least, since he’s met up with any of his old high school team (barring Iwaizumi, of course). Three years since he’s even stayed in Miyagi for more than a day or two at a time. Three years since the last time he and Iwaizumi had drunkenly made out and pretended the next day like everything was fine. Making it home for Christmas hasn’t been high on his list of priorities.

But then he'd gotten hurt, and his mother had insisted.

She’d been lonely since his father had passed the year before (Oikawa had made it home for the funeral but had had to leave early the next morning for a match). Oikawa’s sister had been begging him to come home for months even before the injury, anyway. He has surgery scheduled for next week at a top orthopedic hospital in New York City. Between now and then he will be staying in his old bedroom, in his old house, in his old town.

His mother hugs him tightly and cries, albeit silently, when he enters the house. She tries to hide it from him but he knows, of course he knows. He chooses not to say anything. 

“My boy,” she says, cupping her hand to his cheek, pride in her voice. “I’m so glad you’re home, Tooru.”

“Me, too,” he lies easily, summoning a smile that she doesn’t care to look beyond, and lets her pull him into another hug. 

Pleasantries are exchanged and she tries to get him to stay downstairs for dinner, but he waves her off easily enough with the excuse of jet lag. With promises of getting some sleep he lugs his bag up the stairs and lets himself into the bedroom.

Iwaizumi Hajime is sitting on his bed.

\---

_ six months prior _

_ “Iwa-chan!” _

_ “Is that the voice of famous Japanese setter Oikawa Tooru I hear?” Iwaizumi asks from the other end of the line. “Why, what on earth would he be calling me for?” _

_ Oikawa giggles as he falls backward onto his hotel bed. “Shut up, asshole.” _

_ “Where the hell have you been, anyway? You haven’t called to annoy me in almost a week. I think that’s some kind of record.” _

_   
_ _ Oikawa hums softly. “I miss you too. How are you?” _

_ “Ah, you know. Same old, same old.” He can almost hear the shrug in Iwaizumi’s voice. “Shoulders and knees are always getting injured.” _

_ “Keeps you busy and paid.” _

_ Iwaizumi huffs a laugh. “Anyway. It really is unlike you to not call for so long. You’re not overworking yourself, are you?” _

_ Oikawa flips over onto his stomach and picks at a loose thread in the comforter. His reply is quiet. “Are you my mother, Iwa-chan?” _

_ There’s an extended moment of silence, and Oikawa’s muscles tense for the fight he knows is coming. When Iwaizumi speaks again his voice is calmer than Oikawa had anticipated. “How many times do we have to have this conversation?” _

_ “We could just not have it,” Oikawa offers, dry and a little bitter. _

_ “Or you could stop being an idiot and working yourself to death.” _ _   
_ _ Oikawa sits up, feeling petulant. “I’m hardly going to die.” _

_ “No, Oikawa, but you could get seriously hurt. And then what?” _

_ “I’m not going to get hurt, Iwa-chan, you always worry—” _

_ “Of course I worry!” _

_ “—you worry for  _ nothing _ —” _

_ “Was it for nothing when you really did get hurt? When you were off the court entirely for two months and you were depressed as all hell—” _

_ “—I’m a grown-ass adult, I don’t understand why you can’t let me—” _

_ “If you’re grown then fucking act like it, Tooru!” _

_ Iwaizumi’s heavy breathing fills the silence. They’re miles, continents, oceans apart and yet the tension between them is thick enough to slice like cake. Oikawa’s free hand clenches into a fist. “So that’s how you really feel,  _ Hajime?”

_ (All the ways he’d imagined Iwaizumi’s given name falling from his lips and he’d never once pictured the twisted, scathing bitterness that forms in his voice now). _

_ “I—that isn’t what I meant.” _

_ Oikawa stands and crosses over to the window. The city below is quiet, only the occasional horn blown or pedestrian shouting, so unlike the turmoil in his own heart. “I think that’s exactly what you meant or you wouldn’t have said it.” _

_ “I shouldn’t have put it like that, I’m—” _

_ “Shut up, Iwaizumi. Just stop.” _

_ Oikawa contemplates hanging up then, but something keeps him on the line. The possibility that his oldest, closest friend isn’t about to give up on him, maybe. He swallows hard. _

_ “I have to go.” _

_ “Oikawa, wait—” _

_ Oikawa kicks at the baseboard. “What?” _

_ “I just. I’m—” _

_ “Don’t fucking apologize,” Oikawa spits. “I don’t want to hear it.” _

_ A pause, then: “Goddamnit, Tooru, why do you have to be so hard to—” _

_ Sudden silence. A hard thump. _

_ “Hard to what?” Oikawa asks. _

_ Iwaizumi doesn’t answer right away. “Fine,” he says eventually. The fight is gone from his voice entirely. He sounds exhausted. Miserable. “If this is how you want to act, then that’s fine. But Tooru, I won’t be there to catch you the next time you fall. Just remember that.” _

_ The call ends before Oikawa can find a response.  _

\---

present day

A soft muttering of "Iwa-chan" falls from his lips before he can stop himself, his voice shaky and unsure. Iwaizumi looks up and meets Oikawa's eyes, his own hard and...sad, almost. Disappointed, maybe.

"Hello, Oikawa," he says. Oikawa's heart beats faster at the sound of his voice, and he curses himself internally. He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again he offers Iwaizumi an insincere smile.

"How did you get in here?" he asks, setting down his bag and hobbling over to the desk chair. "Surely my window hasn't been unlocked all this time—"

"Okaa-san let me in," he answers shortly.

She hadn’t even warned him, Oikawa thinks bitterly. It’s not like she didn’t know what had happened between them. He’d called her after, once he’d calmed down enough to speak again. She knew everything.

“Right. Well,” Oikawa says, his voice tight. He stands abruptly and starts for the door. “If you’ll excuse me—”

“It’s your room, dumbass,” Iwaizumi deadpans, even as he stands and supports Oikawa’s weight on his bad side. Oikawa tries not to flinch away from the touch. “Would you please sit back down before you make it worse?”

Oikawa goes back to the chair and sits. He sniffs. “I’ve got it under control.”

Iwaizumi’s frown deepens; Oikawa’s only looking out of the corner of his eye, but he can see that Iwaizumi isn’t pleased. “Cut the bullshit, Oikawa. You know I can see how much pain you’re in.”

Oikawa’s eyes close, and in his mind he hears Iwaizumi’s last words to him, six months ago. They’d been quiet in contrast to the shouting they’d been doing, spoken harshly into the phone, voice raw:  _ “I won’t be there to catch you the next time you fall.” _ He takes a deep breath. 

“What does it matter to you?” he asks, willing his voice not to catch in his throat. 

“Your pain matters to me, you idiot, you’re my best friend.”

“Am I?” Oikawa hisses, his eyes opening again and finding Iwaizumi. “Because our lack of communication since July suggests otherwise.”

“Just because we fought doesn’t mean I stopped caring about you—”

“Your ‘care,’” —Oikawa makes finger quotes in the air— “did nothing for me while I was alone in the hospital, when you couldn’t even bother to text—”

“From overworking yourself, which is exactly what I told you not to do—”

“Oh good, now we’re going to have the exact same fight we had six months ago, that’s really a gift for me this holiday season.”

Iwaizumi pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a deep breath. “That’s not why I’m here.”   
“Then why are you here? Come to rub it in my face?”

Iwaizumi frowns. “Isn’t it enough that I’ve missed you?”

Oikawa scowls at him. “You’ve missed me.”

“Yes.”

The answer is genuine, the way Iwaizumi always is, and if Oikawa were less angry he might take it at face value. Might tell Iwaizumi he’s missed him, too (he has, desperately). Instead he spins his chair away from Iwaizumi. “No. It’s not enough.”

Iwaizumi sighs and stays quiet for a moment. Oikawa stretches his good knee and tries not to jostle the bad one.

"Just let me help you," Iwaizumi says, his voice hardly audible. "Stop being so goddamn pig-headed and—"

Oikawa turns his head and raises an eyebrow. "You pretty clearly told me you didn't want to be involved anymore."

"When has that ever stopped you?" Iwaizumi counters. He bites his lip and takes a deep breath, raising a hand as Oikawa goes to retort. "Fuck. I'm sorry, this isn't how this was supposed to go." 

"How what was supposed to go?"

"Did you think I was lying when I said I've missed you?" Iwaizumi inches to the edge of the bed, as close as he can get to Oikawa without sliding off of it entirely. "I've missed you every day, Tooru."

Oikawa swallows and fidgets with the sleeve of his shirt. "Could you stop with the given name thing? Honestly it's weirding me out."

"No," Iwaizumi answers. He slips off the bed, onto his knees, and places both his hands on Oikawa's bad knee. "I shouldn't have said what I did and I'm so sorry, Tooru. I've wanted to apologize every day but I was too proud and too scared. Please let me help you. Let me be here for you."

Oikawa looks down at Iwaizumi. "Iwa-chan…"

Iwaizumi shakes his head. “Hajime.”

Oikawa reaches out, finally, finally touches Iwaizumi, his fingers running through the hair he’s been growing out since Oikawa last saw him, his hands shaking. “Hajime.”

Iwaizumi massages Oikawa’s knee with deft, skilled fingers. Oikawa continues stroking Iwaizumi’s hair until Iwaizumi pauses and looks up at him. 

“Hajime.”

“Tooru.”

“I should have listened to you. You were right all along, and we could have avoided all of this if I weren’t...if I weren’t so pig-headed. I’m sorry, too.”

There’s a very short moment of hesitation before Iwaizumi cups Oikawa’s jaw with one hand. “I forgive you, Tooru.”

Oikawa leans into the touch, closes his eyes. He takes in a deep breath before speaking again. “Do you really think I’m hard to love?”

“No,” Iwaizumi says without hesitation. “No, no, you’re not hard to love at all. Loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”

Oikawa’s eyes open, and he sees Iwaizumi looking up at him, and something in him breaks. He leans down and slots their mouths together firmly, and Iwaizumi’s hand slips from his cheek to grasp his neck, and there are tears falling, making their kiss taste like salt, and he pulls away to find Iwaizumi crying, too. Oikawa presses their foreheads together.

“I missed you, too,” he whispers as their noses brush. “I missed you every day, too.”

Iwaizumi grabs Oikawa’s hand and tugs him into his own bed, and Oikawa lets himself be pulled down into a tight embrace, Iwaizumi on his side, Oikawa tucked tight against his chest. Iwaizumi kisses his forehead and lets his lips linger, and Oikawa sighs a breath into the skin of Iwaizumi’s neck.

“Don’t go,” Oikawa murmurs.

Iwaizumi shakes his head. “I’m not going anywhere.”

\---

When Oikawa’s mother finds them in the morning, it’s with Iwaizumi’s arms wrapped tightly around Oikawa’s waist, his calf between Oikawa’s legs, his head shoved into Oikawa’s back, both of them still fully clothed in what they’d been wearing the night before. Oikawa’s eyes peek open when he hears the door creak, and he doesn’t even bother to feel embarrassed at the look his mother gives him.

“You slept well?” she whispers.

He nods and scoots a little closer to Iwaizumi, who sighs in his sleep and presses himself back into Oikawa.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks forever and always to becca sam and lu  
> title from relient k's merry christmas (here's to many more)


End file.
